Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

We Apple developers used to joke in ’85 that the most powerful computer Apple shipped was the LaserWriter.

What most people don’t realize today was how radical the inclusion a medium-speed LAN interface in all machines was at that time. Most people today have no clue what AppleTalk was or where it came from (XNS), but at the time it was a pretty nifty thing to be able to slap together a cheap LAN with twisted pair phone cables in the office and share a printer and a file server.

There ought to be a section with the NeXT hardware. Wouldn’t be very big, only about 7 computer models (030 Cube, 040 Cube, 040 Turbo Cube, NeXTStation Mono, NeXTStation Turbo, NeXTStation Color, NeXTStation Turbo Color), the NeXTDimension color graphics board for the Cube, the mono NeXT Laser Printer, the NeXT Color Printer, and that’s it. (If you exclude the NeXT Risc Workstation, that was to sport dual Motorola 88k or PPC CPUs, but never shipped.)

Here’s a video NeXT made about their factory, where NeXT computers controlled the robots that made NeXT machines.

Speaking of the NeXT factory, I wish someone had asked Steve why he never tried that again at Apple. NeXT never had the volumes to make it economical (it had a capacity of something like 10,000 computers per month, but probably never exceeded 1,000/month), but Apple certainly would. Are Chinese factories cheaper? More flexible or versatile? Could a NeXT-style factory be built for less money now? Or is it the kind of thing where the machinery and robotics have advanced and stayed expensive, rather than dropping in price.

I suppose even if Apple had built a NeXT-style automated factory, they’d probably still need to build it in China, to be closer to the suppliers.

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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